Rendezvous Ourselves Right Into the Weekend

I have spent most of today feeling like a train ran me down, and not the fun kinda train either, hence the truly inadequate posting -- I'd intended to get more reviews from the "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series, now up and running at FLC, posted! But my brain just hit a wall, stomped its little brain feet, and is refusing to participate with shit. And so I know sometimes I promise to post over the weekend and then I ghost y'all but really, check back over the next couple of days, I think if I allow myself a good veg out tonight and sleep in tomorrow I can catch myself back up. 

For now I previewed the series right here, and yesterday I did review two films that are now playing -- read my thoughts on My Donkey My Lover and I right here, and read my thoughts on Red Soil right here. Hopefully over the weekend I will share my thoughts on some others I have seen (all the titles are over there >>> in the right-hand column in my "Watched" list now in case you're curious), including the one called Faithful, which stars our fave Vincent Lacoste, seen up top. Hi Vincent! "Rendezvous" runs through March 14th!

5 Off My Head: French Kisses For Everybody

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Did that photograph of Raphaël Personnaz grab your attention? I feel as if that photograph of Raphaël Personnaz might've grabbed your attention. It grabs mine! And now that we're all good and grabbed, here's the good word - the ever wonderful Film Society of Lincoln Center here in NYC has just announced the full line-up for the annual awesomeness that is their "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series, and it's a doozy. You can see the entire line-up right here - it runs for the first two weeks of March - but I'm gonna highlight five titles that are grabbing me the hardest.

Frantz (Francois Ozon) - It's Ozon, period. I'm there. But I've been wanting to see Frantz for several months even besides, thanks to the trailer full of a shirtless mustachioed Pierre Niney running around. Watch the trailer here, with bonus gifs. 

And bonus: Niney also co-stars in the Closing Night film The Odyssey, which stars Lambert Wilson as Jacques Cousteau...

... Niney plays Lambert's son and Audrey Tatou plays his wife. The funny thing that made me laugh about this movie is I looked up its writer-director, a man named Jérôme Salle, to see what else he'd done and wham, even the director is hot:

I love the French. Anyway Salle will be there for a Q&A with The Odyssey, and Francios Ozon will be there for a Q&A with Frantz too.

Raw (Julia Ducournau) - This is the last title I expected to see popping up here in this series and I let out an audible gasp when it saw it was - this cannibal comedy has been making people literally pass out and get sick at film festivals for months now, so naturally I've been clamoring for it and clamoring for it. 

Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello) - I know a lot of people think that Bonello's last movie, 2014's fashion biopic Saint Laurent, is too long and self-indulgent, but I hate your dumb face if you think so - it's glorious. I saw it three times in the theater and I could've gone every night for a month. So whatever he did next I was gonna be excited about, but FSLC's write-up of this movie has got me literally goose-bumping. Let me just cut and paste because HELL YES:

"The audacious new film from Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent) unfolds in two mesmerizing segments. The first is a precision-crafted thriller, following a multi-ethnic group of millennial radicals as they carry out a mass-scale terrorist attack on Paris. The second—in which the perpetrators hide out in the consumerist mecca of a luxury department store—is the director’s coup, raising provocative questions about everything that came before. Bonello stages his apocalyptic vision with stylishly roving camerawork, blasts of hip-hop, and a lip-synced performance to Shirley Bassey’s “My Way.” This is edgy, risk-taking filmmaking that is sure to ignite debate. "

In the Forest of Siberia (Safy Nebbou) - And we get to Raphaël Personnaz, as promised! Raphaël, who we've been crushing on ever since we first saw him in a movie at the 2015 edition of Rendezvous (you'll really want to click on this link here because we have been thorough with our love), stars as a young dude who isolates himself in the wilderness... aka an excuse to stare at a man as gorgeous as Raphaël Personnaz framed against white snow while staring plaintively. I'm there. Oh and I should mention he also walks around the snow buck naked, as captured by us already in this post from October. Seeing that on the big screen? I'm REALLY there.

It's a shame I'm limiting myself to just five titles because there are even more I want to see -- Gaspard Ulliel in The Dancer! Marion Cotillard and Louis Garrel in From the Land of the Moon! Natalie Portman as a 1930s spiritualist in Planetarium!!! Basically just say goodbye to me for the first two weeks of March, is what I am saying.

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Good Morning, World

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I never got around to writing up my thoughts on several films I saw screened at FLC's "Rendezvous With French Cinema" series at the start of this month -- hey remember three weeks ago? -- because, well, you know, other things started taking over our minds at that point, and it got hard to write. It remains hard to write, as the site over the past two weeks of scarce content attests. Anyway one of the films I never got around to reviewing was Cédric Klapisch's romantic drama Someone, Somewhere starring your boy François Civil seen here. Civil was in two films at Rendezvous; I talked about the other one in my intro to this year's slate right here. (And you can see lots more of him in this great big gratuitous post I did last year, too.) The film's not out here in the US (not sure when or if that will happen) but I do believe it's streaming across the pond, so to those readers I say, it's a nice movie. Sweet, thoughtful and romantic. You could do worse for distracting yourselves for a couple hours from the world around... well, the world. Hit the jump for more gifs...

Red Soil Rich with Heart

What is it that's so compelling and cathartic about a good environmental crisis thriller? I speak of the Silkwoods of the world, the Erin Brockovichs -- the "normal person takes on an evil polluting corporation" films where we watch someone uncover the horrors done to an entire community in the name of greed? I guess it's the Goliath-hater inside all of us, and in this case probably fed by the white hot panic stirring inside us every day as we turn on the news and see more cancer, more climate change, and feel helpless. They're stories of our moment with a solid villain and an infuriating process that gets in the way -- the unraveling of which can be, in the right hands, hella cinematic and thick with heady revenge highs.

Screening as part of the "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series here in NYC for the next ten days Farid Bentoumi's film Red Soil is just such a film, and should be set right astride the best of the genre -- it's better than Todd Haynes' 2019 well-shot but muddled stab at it with Dark Waters anyway, and if you can do something better than Todd Haynes I'd say you're doing a damn lot right. Red Soil tells the true story of a nurse named Nour (the tremendously transfixing and empathetic Zita Hanrot) who goes to work at her father's chemical plant, only to discover that the place is a death trap.

Per usual Nour is met with mountains of red tape, but Red Soil is smart to make Nour's father Slimane (played by the terrific Sami Bouajila) the primary force walling her off -- watching their sweet relationship fracture due to his stonewalling, all in the name of his paycheck, is heart-rending; in the way of all good familial dramas (think of it akin to Asghar Farhadi's output) you can see and feel both sides, to a sometimes excruciating degree. Not that it's not clear who's in the right here, but Bentoumi makes it clear that being "right" has huge casualties of its own. There are no simple paths in the disassembling of societal structures, especially ones so enmeshed with the fabric of a community as this one.

Everyone in this town works for the plant -- everyone in this town also stands to get deeply sick due to it, too. And the film isn't afraid of facing the question at the heart of people put into these situations, which is "Is my life worth more than this?" A lot of people just simply don't think so, so beaten down has the system made them, and so they accept their own exploitations in exchange for a home for their families. We'll gladly step into the meat-grinder as long as what comes out can keep the people we love fed. Red Soil makes enthralling drama out of one family forced to measure their future, their worth, and how we should all number one top of the day just look out for one another whatever the consequences.

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Red Soil is screening through March 10th on FLC's website

check out this year's "Rendezvous with French Cinema" line-up here.

Free Bai!

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Bai Ling was arrested yesterday for trying to steal two tabloids and a pack of batteries from a shop in the terminal at LAX!

Here's the plan, my fellow Ling-lovers: Y'all set up a candlelight vigil outside of the police station where she's being held. I'm going to dress as a repairman and sneak in the back. I'll break out some wire-fu, slip down through an air conditioner vent, and stuff Bai in my toolbox (no, that's not a euphemism... OR IS IT???). Y'all throw some garbage cans around, maybe tip over an ice cream truck, and I'll make my way down into the sewers while the policemen are distracted. We'll rendezvous at the local deli used on weekends for a group of jihadists; I know these fellas, they're down with the Bai as well.

Okay, on my mark...
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Room & Me Rendezvous Tonight

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Sorry for being such a procrastinating yutz, Brie.

Any of you guys seen Room yet? Thoughts?

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The Moment I Fell For... Frances McDormand

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While it's true that I worship every single second of McDormand's performance here in Fargo and could've just posted the first frame of her in the movie, there is something special about this scene in particular... it's pretty much out-of-nowhere, but fills in so much of her character that it's impossible to imagine Margie feeling as rich, as human, as she does without it. It's four minutes of the film that could've easily been cut out and no one would've been the wiser - it has no bearing on the central action of the story whatsoever - but when it comes down to Marge's speech at the end, with the horrors she's witnessed, and she questions the morality of the world she lives in... well it's hard not to think back on her minuscule rendezvous with temptation and how easily she slipped free. That's cuz she's motherfuckin' Marge Gunderson, and she's better than that, eh.
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

X-Men (2000)

Wolverine: [on Cerebro] Well it certainly is a big round room. 

The first X-Men film came out fifteen years ago today! It's pretty much safe to say that the entire cinematic superhero juggernaut we're up to our eyeballs in can be traced back to Bryan Singer's original film right? I mean sure there were superhero movies before it, big ones even, but the flood-gates really burst after it. And here we are fifteen years later and Bryan Singer's at Comic-Con showing footage from his latest rendezvous with mutant-kind. To paraphrase a certain Mr. Wooderson, we get older but the mutants they stay the same age...

I Am Link

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--- Hi Oh Silver - The trailer for the big-budget Lone Ranger movie starring Johnny Depp in war-paint and turquoise jewelry beside the ever handsome ever tall forever after Armie Hammer in spurs can be seen right here. I haven't watched it yet so y'all tell me if there's a scene where he plunks down all six-foot-forever of himself in one of those teensy little cowboy tubs, okay? That's all this movie is in my head, even if it never happens. Oh and here's the movie's poster.

--- Munster Hospital - In light of the blazing panic we all felt course through our deepest places at the hands of that lousy lie-plagued rumor about Mockingbird Lane's sudden demise, Michael over at Hollywood.com wrote up a terrific piece on why we need The Munsters now more than ever.

--- Stone To Signal - I hope you're keeping up with Glenn's "31 Horrors" series at Stale Popcorn for this the spookiest month, he's made some interesting choices so far, like The Stone Tape which I've been meaning to see for a long time, and The Signal, which I liked a lot. (Bonus: gratuitous shot of Justin Welborn's behind.)

--- Start Leaking - Bill Condon (man I need to watch Gods and Monsters again soon) wants to make a movie about Wikileaks figure-head Julian Assange and Benedict Cumberbatch might play him. Joel Kinnaman, pictured right, would also be in it as Assange's right hand man. I think I would watch that.

--- Whither Witch - Nat takes on the upcoming movie version of Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods, and before you do a double-take yes I'm mentioning a musical, but even though I've never seen it I've always wanted to see ITW for some reason; I tried to get tickets online all Summer long to the Amy Adams version in Central Park but never won. I guess the movie with Meryl will have to be my first exposure.

--- Dead Children - I'm terribly upset I missed ParaNorman in theaters, I really wanted to see it. It comes out on DVD on November 27th so I suppose that will be our time to rendezvous then.

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Good Morning, World

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Ever since João Pedro Rodrigues's surreal gay fantasia called The Ornothologist came out in 2016 we always get excited -- multifaceted word that, "excited" -- when the French actor Paul Hamy pops up in something new. And so the past year has been an exciting one for us, since this here marks our third Hamy sighting in 2020 -- there was the melodrama Sibyl which played NYFF last fall (reviewed here) and there was the romantic-drama Someone Somewhere which was supposed to play FLC's annual "Rendezvous With French Cinema" series a couple of months ago -- I posted about it here but I can't recall if it actually screened or not, since that fest coincided with everything shutting down. But it's a nice movie and I seem to recall that Paul has a nice shirtless scene in it...

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And now Paul Hamy has shown up
I clearly made the correct choice pic.twitter.com/epiZ0ZG3og

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 7, 2020

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... which I guess I only tweeted about? I should give that its own post sometime. Anyway those were earlier -- today we're looking at the 2019 movie called Get In (known in France as Furie), directed by Olivier Abbou who also made 2010's so-called "French Extremity" flick Territories, which was basically torture porn about anti-Muslim hatred from what I recall. Get In is also a horror film but I don't really know what its gist is, something about scary squatters (it's hard to make the word "squatter" scary) -- I do wonder if its American title is at all a purposeful reference to Jordan Peele's Get Out, and...

... race does seem to be an issue in Get In judging by some scenes I skimmed. But, as said skimming implies, I have not yet actually watched this movie so who knows! However I can, you can, we all can watch this movie, because it's on Netflix right now. Perhaps you already have watched it and can share your thoughts! Otherwise let's just get after the jump for a few more Paul Hamy gifs since I really have nothing more to say right now...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Lt. Aldo Raine: You didn't say the goddamn rendezvous 

was in a fuckin' basement. 

Lt. Archie Hicox: I didn't know. 

Lt. Aldo Raine: You said it was in a tavern. 

Lt. Archie Hicox: It is a tavern. 

Lt. Aldo Raine: Yeah, in a basement. You know, 

fightin' in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. 

Number one being: you're fightin' in a basement! 

A happy 52 to Quentin Tarantino today!

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Give This Ass a Chance

One of those movies that sweetly sneaks up on you before you realize what it's done, My Donkey, My Lover, and I (screening as part of FLC's "Rendezvous with French Cinema") stars Laure Calamy as Antoinette, a school-teacher who's first introduced to us as a bit of a nutter -- dominating her room full of elementary kids so that she's the star of their pageant (including a bit where she gets mostly naked in front of them in order to change outfits) she is too much too much from the get-go, and that's before we find out she's sleeping with one of the married parents of her students. 

But Antoinette's unapologetic and sunny enthusiasm grows on you quick (Calamy is absolutely winning in the role) and even as we watch the character make outrageously ill-thought-out decisions -- the entire film's about her stalking said married parent on his weeklong family getaway, hiking in the mountains astride the titular ass which she is wildly unequipped to handle -- we find ourselves rooting for her to figure out her right angle, and find a route through to something like actual happiness. 

And thankfully the film never tilts too hard into whimsy -- it's cute and charming but in a delicately balanced way, never overdoing the comedy, or somehow, astonishingly, never pushing Antoinette's ditziness into the off-putting. We watch her spill the beans with a big smile on her home-wrecking purposes to a room-full of people she has literally just met, and Calamy makes it all work, down to the last drop. You can see why any (straight) man would be willing to toss decorum over for this delightful nut, and you can also see why she's so much better than the hand she's dealt herself at the same time. 

And then somehow it becomes one of the sweetest animal movies I've seen in ages to boot? Antoinette's push-pull relationship with Patrick, her Irish donkey partner on this improbable romantic trek, will absolutely win you over by the end -- there's a bray in the last act that will crumble the heart of the coldest donkey hater. I'd watch a thousand adventures of Antoinette and her best ass friend, I tell ya!

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My Donkey, My Lover, and I is screening through March 10th 

on FLC's website. Check out this year's "French Cinema" line-up here.

Big Man in the Armie

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Armie Hammer & Joe "Big Man" Manganiello are still toying with us - after mysteriously tweeting at each other earlier this week now they're both posting pictures of a recent rendezvous on Instagram. But we have no idea what it is they're working on! So I'm choosing to believe that they're mashing up Magic Mike with Armie's forthcoming gay coming of age movie Call Me By Your Name - the movie will be called Call Me By Your Stripper Name, and it will gross millions of individual sweaty single dollar bills.

Never Say Ever Again

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There's a hollow at the heart of Spectre that echoes outward - I could imagine Sam Mendes arguing it's intentional, that it externalizes Mr. Bond's ruined interior, carved out by so much loss, but it reads more as laziness. This movie feels like a paycheck, or perhaps if I want to be kinder than that, and I do, a victory lap after the outstanding success of Skyfall. I don't want to be unkind - there are actions scenes here that will grab you by the cliche and make you hold your breath til you're blue in the body parts. The skittering of computer-generated crowds of people have never been used to smarter effect than during the helicopter scene, for example. 

But the music is just a little too loud, and most of the scenes a little too long - everybody poses nicely in their extraordinary outfits and hits their marks just right, but you get the ghost sensation of been there done that from everybody all the same. A weariness has settled over the doubles-ohs, making it more like the double oh-god-that-agains, and I don't think I'm projecting from Daniel Craig's real-world comments - the film feels heavier than it ought to, but like a clapboard wall Bond punches through at one point there's nothing substantial holding it up at this point. (Although the moment that sets up that moment, a silly rendezvous with a mouse of all things, points toward a levity I wish the movie found more time for.)

The nefarious revelations of dun-dun-dunnnn interconnectedness - tentacles upon tentacles! - are half-hearted at best, and weaksauce at worst; Christoph Waltz has been called upon to project sinister depth onto a lot of ridiculousness in his career but the word "cuckoo" seems one step too far, for him and for me. (And did he wander the hallways pinning up those photographs with yarn himself? The high-concept villain equivalent of scrap-booking?) And don't get me started on the way Andrew Scott's character is botched, nothing more than a sniveling afterthought as if they didn't decide until the editing process which way he was going, so he's left sighing and half-sneering in one glass corridor after another glass corridor after another glass corridor...

But sometimes Spectre flies! Really! Daniel Craig is a pit-bull person, even this weary, charging ahead through regular walls and train walls and glass walls and brick walls with some ice-eyed determination. His cast of compatriots are a brogue's gallery of individual etchings, all interesting in their own ways even if given not a lot to do here. And Léa Seydoux is the best Bond Girl since Eva Green (high praise coming from these Eva-obsessed quarters), meeting Craig on equal ground and pushing back with her own slinkier sort of push. Shame the story's ultimately such a pushover.
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/ohmygodisaw jake gyllenhaal

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Okay, fuck it, I can't wait til tomorrow. First off I have to say I totally chickened out and didn't approach him and ask for a photograph or handshake or hug or his hand in marriage like I told myself I would if I ever saw him. I carry a camera even for this specific purpose with me at all times, but I wimped out. He was with this guy:


and... I felt weird. And... sorta blind. And dizzy.

But there he was, Jake in all his Jake glory! Standing five feet away from me! He looked WONDERFUL. Like him. Only... himmier. He's taller than I expected him to be - I know he claims to be 6 feet tall but all the movie stars I've ever seen always seem smaller than I expect them to be, but he didn't. I mean, I'm still taller than him, but he still was an impressive specimen. Not that I expected less.

ANYWAY, he was clean shaven and wearing a plaid shirt and jeans and ramble ramble I can die happy now. Well, except for the chickening out thing. But this will not be our last rendezvous, Mr. Gyllenhaal! Oh no. My camera awaits!

Oh my christ he was so lovely.
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Pierre Niney Two Times

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Tickets went on sale today for the annually amazing "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series at FSLC -- if you missed our big post about it click right here. Niney is the star of Francois Ozon's new film Frantz, which is screening during the fest; you can watch the sexy trailer for Frantz right here. Can't wait!

There Be Movies

For weeks it's been a dry spell for me movie-wise - I haven't seen anything on opening weekend since Star Trek came out a full month ago. I did see Much Ado About Nothing in the interim, but at an early preview - otherwise Hollywood has not been tickling anything even close to my fancy as of late. So I caught up on a bunch of Marlene Dietrich movies and played Drop7 instead (speaking to the latter - dear god I need a twelve stop program, I haven't been able to stop playing Drop7 for months).

Anyway all that changes this weekend. Man of Steel is obviously, oh so obviously, on my list, I'm seeing it Sunday. But there are actually other things! In fact there are so many other things that I am instantly behind already! What else? Let us take a look.

I should have gone and seen This is the End on one of the past two nights and gotten it out of the way since it opened on Wednesday. But I didn't. Still, I want to see it. I know it looks like a wank-fest to a lot of you, but I was sold when they showed Rihanna die horribly in the trailer. I will play good money for that!

There's Berberian Sound Studio but I've already (sort of) seen that. I had no plans to see Hatchet III since I am continually flabbergasted as to the franchise's fan-love - I think the first two movies are sloppy ugly messes. And yet they keep getting made, while something graceful and smart like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon can't get a single sequel off the ground in six years. it makes me crazy! But then it was announced that Zach Galligan will be at a screening here in NYC tonight and...

... ZACH GALLIGAN, you guys. 

Obviously, I must.

And finally, the movie that give or take a Superman I have the highest hopes for - Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, which I absolutely cannot cannot cannot wait to see, and yet somehow I have no idea when I will find the time, given my already crowded weekend schedule. Perhaps Monday, me and Emma Watson can rendezvous.

So that's me. What are you all seeing this weekend?

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Good Morning, Gratuitous Ryan Guzman

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It's the 28th birthday of the Channing Tatum heir apparent Ryan Guzman - model check, dancer check, abs for days check. I do feel as I'm belittling Chan's charisma and actual talent a bit with this reduction to poppin' lockin' body parts, but then I haven't actually ever seen Mr. Guzman in anything! I think his turn in the new Heroes series will probably mark our first rendezvous. 

(Click here for previous Ryan Guzman posts.) But for those of you who have seen Mr. Guzman's talents in, ahem, motion, how's he fare? Is he just a pretty pretty block of hippity-hoppity or what? And hit the jump for more of the pretty pretty...

Double Dude Dared

Today is just The Day of me posting about movies that other than slutty purposes I'd otherwise have no interest in, huh? I know, just like every day. But especially today! First I eke out the only thing that matters in The Proposal, then comes Gerry Butler's night-stick rendezvous in Law Abiding Citizen, and now a movie starring Emmy fuckin' Rossum. Shudder. The world might end. See, the name "Emmy Rossum" is a curse-word as far as I'm concerned. I just... I don't acknowledge her.

But now strolls along this thing, this movie called Dare, and goddamn it I might have to see it. Watch the trailer and you'll immediately know why. I took some screen-caps, which helpfully omit all Rossum to be had and illuminate the desirable elements:


Namely, the desirable elements you see are the sexy-times shared between Friday Night Lights star Zach Gilford and "one of the boys that gets his penis bitten off in the wonderful movie Teeth," Ashley Springer. I can't believe I've never given Gilford any love here at MNPP - even though I still haven't seen any of FNL (I know) I have had my eye on him ever since he strolled naked into the snow in Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter.


And, while one of the other guys who got their penis bitten off in the wonderful movie Teeth, Hale Appleman (also someone I can't believe I never gave love to - although the movie did get some Ways Not To Die love back in the day - so here...


... that's better) was more my type, Mr. Springer's looking adorable in this trailer and is certainly a worthy lip-partner for Gilford.


So yes, I guess that I want to watch a movie with... ugh... Emmy Rossum in it. Dammit. You've won this battle, Emmy Rossum! But not the war.
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